


last night when we were young

by pocky_slash



Series: grace coming out of the void [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Campaign: Amnesty (The Adventure Zone), Comedy of Errors, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Memories, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25403905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: Barclay keeps all the precious mementos from his life on Earth and his travels across the country in a manila envelope for safekeeping. He probably should have been more careful about leaving that envelope out in public.(Barclay gets nostalgic, Agent Stern picks up something he shouldn't have, and Indrid is fairly certain the day won't end with Barclay in government custody.)
Relationships: Barclay/Indrid Cold (The Adventure Zone)
Series: grace coming out of the void [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1308866
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	last night when we were young

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, folks! I hope your quar is going as well as can be expected!
> 
> Mine has been pretty rotten! But I'm re-listening to Amnesty with my roommate and the bit about Stern investigating Bigfoot-adjacent missing persons, specifically, pinged in my brain a bit, and I somehow managed to churn all of this out in like, a week, despite having quite a bit of trouble getting any other words on paper for the whole length of quarantine. Wild.
> 
> Anyway, this takes place directly following "[a very merry unbirthday](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17658533)," in the nebulous time between the December hunt and the February hunt.

Indrid is, remarkably, asleep when Barclay's alarm goes off. Barclay had fully expected to wake to Indrid hunched over a sketch pad, scribbling away, completely oblivious to the time. On most of their nights together since their reconciliation, Indrid has been squarely in the habit of using Barclay's morning alarm as a reminder to go to sleep, which isn't the worst schedule they've ever been on. Barclay gets out of bed a little before five and ends breakfast service a little after ten, which means Indrid is usually rolling out of bed just in time to spend an hour or two with Barclay before lunch service starts.

It's not the case today. When Barclay switches off his alarm, Indrid is curled up against his chest, dead to the world. Despite the space heater pointed at the bed and the mountain of blankets on top of them, Barclay can still sense the chill in the February air, and getting himself to leave the cocoon of warmth is more difficult than usual. He closes his eyes and lets himself linger for just a few extra minutes, reminded of so many mornings that have started just like this, faded and dream-like thanks to the passing years.

And it's not the same. Not truly. But it's still good--it's better than good, even, to return to the well of feelings that Indrid has always inspired in him, but with the benefit of time and history and hindsight. He's spent the past few decades building a home for himself while missing this one thing. To be allowed, unbelievably, to have it once again after years of yearning still feels miraculous.

He presses his nose into Indrid's hair and breathes deeply, his eyes still closed. In his mind's eye, he suddenly sees a drawing that was ubiquitous for most of the years he spent in the Winnebago, turning up as a bookmark or on a pile of newspapers or stuffed into the glove compartment over and over again. It's one of Indrid's, of course, a pencil sketch of the two of them in bed just like this. Sometime back in the early 70s, Barclay came home from a long, exhausting shift at the diner to find it taped to the cabinet where he stored his clothes. _Call in sick tomorrow,_ it said on the bottom in Indrid's cramped handwriting.

He did call in sick and they did stay in bed together nearly all day, just like in the picture. It wasn't salacious--they spent the majority of the time sleeping and talking. It was a day to recharge. It was just what Barclay had needed at the time.

He kept the drawing. Even after the break-up, when he threw out so many of the things he had accumulated during his decades with Indrid, he kept the drawing. It went into the manilla envelope of mementos that he carried with him from place to place until he ended up here, at Amnesty Lodge. The envelope went into the bottom drawer of his desk and he hasn't looked at the contents more than once or twice since. He hasn't looked at it at all since Indrid came back into his life, and he's struck by the sudden urge to do so.

He slips out of bed as carefully as possible, tucking the blankets around Indrid once he's up. He dresses quickly and then opens the bottom drawer of his desk and pulls out the envelope, taking it with him as he silently sneaks out of his bedroom and down the hall to the dining area.

He moves through the first part of his morning routine, hitting the lights and making himself a cup of coffee. He updates the menu board for breakfast and then hangs it back in its regular spot on the wall. With a glance at the clock, he decides he has enough time to take a quick look at the envelope, and pulls a chair over to an empty table before unfolding the flap of the envelope and pouring its contents onto the table.

It's a strange collection of things. There are some worn pages from the Sylvan prayer book his mother carried with her in his youth, the edges soft and the print so foreign to his eyes after all of these years. There are driver's licenses from all of his various Earth identities, all of them held together with a rubber band. There are some newspaper clippings about Bigfoot sightings that he kept as reminders of his own fallibility. And then, of course, there are the artifacts of his time with Indrid. Photos of the two of them going back to when they first met, a number of drawings that Indrid made over the years, ticket stubs from nights out, business cards from places he used to work, postcards from their travels over the years....

He's been on Earth for fifty-two years as of yesterday. He's traveled light, for the most part, but all of the things that have really mattered to him are reflected in the contents of this envelope, in one way or another. It feels fitting to look at it now, on the heels of a celebration he never thought he'd have again. It feels like the right time to look through the vestiges of his life with fresh eyes.

Or, maybe not exactly the right time. He needs to get breakfast started, after all. The day's kitchen aides and wait staff will be arriving momentarily and he's barely managed any prep so far. He scoops the pile of mementos off of the table and back into the envelope, then leaves it on a table in the back, out of the way of the mess of the kitchen, and heads in to start his prep before the kitchen help arrives. He'll have plenty of time to revisit the past later, once Indrid is awake.

* * *

The morning is quiet. Moira and Adler arrive to help with breakfast, the former waiting tables and the latter assisting in the kitchen. The day eventually dawns overcast and grey, which means they have fewer outside guests for breakfast than they might otherwise. Snow is threatening, if the weather forecast is anything to go by, which means that they'll probably see a nice spike in business over the next week, but today they're in for some quiet. A quiet day coinciding with a visit from Indrid means they'll have even more time together, and if the snow is heavy, that might mean Indrid sticks around a little longer than he might have otherwise.

Even the traffic from the permanent guests is light. There's only a trickle of activity over the course of the morning, with more people picking up sandwiches or some fruit and fewer sitting down for a full breakfast. Dani lingers at a table sketching and eating pancakes and Caterina sits in a corner reading through three coffee refills. Agent Stern is deeply absorbed in a pile of work folders and _Lamplighters_ that he brings into the dining area with him, and while that would normally be cause for alarm, at least it's keeping him from trying to make awkward conversation with Barclay.

It's a good morning, made better when Indrid appears a little before ten, his hair damp from the shower, and leans against the counter beneath the kitchen window. He's smiling and wearing a thick, zip-up fair isle sweater that Dani got Barclay for Christmas last year. The sleeves are rolled up far enough for the tips of his fingers to peek out of them, and Barclay can't help but grin at the sight.

"It must be the end times if you're out of bed before I'm done with breakfast," he says.

"That's no way to treat a guest," Indrid says, but he leans over the counter to demand a kiss that Barclay is all too happy to give. "And you're being awfully unhygienic, kissing strange men in the kitchen."

Barclay rolls his eyes and steals another kiss before straightening up. "You're strange, alright. Go find somewhere to sit," he says. "I'll make you pancakes."

"If you insist," Indrid says, and gives Barclay a parting smile as he heads off to find a table.

Indrid's the last person to make it in for breakfast service. Barclay makes him some pancakes as Adler begins cleaning up the kitchen, then prepares a cup of coffee to Indrid's specifications. He brings them out himself once they're done, and sits down across from Indrid, still grinning.

"Thank you, my dear," Indrid says, already prepared to douse the chocolate chip pancakes in syrup. "You're in an awfully good mood this morning."

"I am," Barclay admits. "Waking up with you is nice. Waking up and thinking about all our history--all my history, really. All my time here on Earth. I'm just...happy to have ended up here, I guess."

Indrid stops shovelling pancakes into his mouth long enough to reach across the table and take Barclay's hand.

"I'm happy you ended up here too," he says. Barclay raises their clasped hands and presses a kiss to the back of Indrid's.

"I guess it's on my mind because of the anniversary yesterday," he says. "Or maybe it's you being here--who knows. But I took a little stroll down memory lane this morning, and...I don't know, I'm in a good place. I'm happy. And it was nice to look back at all that I've been and all that I've accomplished here on Earth and not have it hurt for once." He releases Indrid's hand and leans forward on his elbows. "I've gotta finish up here, but once I'm done we should look at it together--the envelope of stuff I've kept, I mean. About ninety percent of it involves you in one way or another."

"I'd like that," Indrid says. "I have some things too, though who can say where."

"You really haven't changed at all," Barclay says. He rolls his eyes and pushes himself to his feet. "Do me a favor and grab the envelope on your way out? It's on the table in the--"

Before he can finish his sentence, Indrid's eyes go wide and alarmed and he pushes himself back from the table, jumping to his feet. Barclay knows that look--something is about to go very wrong.

Then he follows Indrid's gaze and sees it happen in real time. Agent Stern walks over to the table holding Barclay's envelope and pauses to fiddle with something on his phone. He puts his pile of folders down for a moment, and when he scoops it up again, the envelope slides in easily amongst them.

And Barclay was having such a good day.

* * *

Indrid manages to drag Barclay back to the kitchen before he starts hyperventilating. He does it swiftly and silently and no one except Moira seems to notice their flight at all, thank god. Stern doesn't, at the very least, engrossed as he is with his phone, despite the fact that he doesn't even have service.

As soon as the door to the kitchen closes behind him, Barclay leans heavily against the wall and buries his face in his hands.

"This isn't happening. This can't be happening. How is this happening?" He drops his hands and stares at Indrid imploringly. "Indrid, I was having a _good day_!"

"Nothing's happened yet," Indrid says, peering cautiously out the kitchen window. "And there's only about a sixty percent chance of anything bad happening, so the odds aren't terribly against us yet."

"Sixty percent?!" Barclay hisses. "That's more than half!"

"It's _nearly_ half, though," Indrid insists. "We've overcome worse before. Take a breath, my dear."

Barclay does, but not without glaring at Indrid first. This is a disaster. This is going to ruin him. A big fucking folder of every secret Barclay has ever had and he left it on a fucking table in a public dining room? What the hell is wrong with him? How the hell did he forget, even for a split second, that a fucking FBI agent was constantly hovering over his shoulder?

He can feel sharp, hot panic building up inside of him, the kind that can easily overwhelm him and send him into an anxiety spiral. He tries his best to push it away, because the last thing he needs is to have hysterics while someone from the government reads his secrets. If nothing else, he needs to be able to run.

"What, precisely, is in the envelope?" Indrid asks, still looking out the window. Barclay takes another deep, shuddering breath and crosses the room to join him. Stern is still engrossed with his phone, though he's returned to his seat. He pulls out one of his folders, flipping it open and skimming the papers inside. He's seemingly oblivious to the fact that all of Barclay's secrets are tucked in between his files.

"Everything!" Barclay snaps. "Just...everything! Pictures of us from fifty years ago and postcards from places we've lived--"

"We can explain those away," Indrid interrupts. 

"--and newspaper clippings of Bigfoot sightings!"

"We can explain those away too, if needed," Indrid says.

"Driver's licenses!" Barclay says desperately. "Every driver's license from every identity I've ever had! Which would be suspicious enough even if I didn't also know that the whole fucking reason he's in Kepler is to investigate missing persons associated with Bigfoot sightings!"

It's a theory that Barclay has been batting around for the four months that Stern has been living at Amnesty Lodge. Barclay can fight, sure, but it's not something he does with any regularity--he doesn't _like_ fighting. And he certainly doesn't like hurting people. He's never killed another person, heavens forbid. If there are missing persons associated with Bigfoot, it's fairly obvious to him who they must be--his cover identities. 

It makes sense. Every time there was a bigfoot sighting that was big enough to make the papers, Barclay quietly left town, taking whatever identity he had assumed at the time with him. He left a trail of "missing persons" all across the country. Add in Indrid's sudden disappearance with him in the wake of these indiscretions, and that makes two or three dozen suspicious disappearances since he was first exiled to Earth fifty-two years ago.

Two or three dozen people whose driver's licenses are sitting in the envelope that Stern is currently holding in his hands.

"Why would you even keep those?" Indrid says, exasperated.

"Because I'm sentimental, okay?" Barclay snaps. "And you have no space to complain about it, given you've never thrown away a fucking thing in your life, Indrid Cold!"

Behind them, the faucet stops running. Adler tentatively walks over to the window to join them.

"Uh, what's going on?" he asks.

"Barclay keeps all his deepest secrets in an envelope that he left, unattended, in the dining area, and your resident FBI agent just picked it up," Indrid says.

Barclay glares at him. "You know, I was thinking very kind thoughts about you this morning."

"What are you going to do?" Adler asks. He looks at Barclay. Barclay looks at Indrid. Indrid continues to stare out the window and hums thoughtfully. He turns his gaze to the clock, then to Dani, then to Stern, and chews his lower lip.

"This has a middling to good chance of succeeding," he finally says, looking up at Barclay. "But you're not going to like it."

"Well, I'm going to like it more than being studied in an FBI lab, so out with it," Barclay says.

"Fine," Indrid says. "Take a tray and go pick up Dani's dishes and mine and Stern's--I'll sacrifice my pancakes for the greater good. Walk the tray over to that empty table--" He points to a high top against the wall about halfway between where Stern is sitting and the kitchen. "--and 'trip' over the chair, dropping the dishes. Stern will leave his things and rush over to help you and if you can keep him talking for a minute or two, I should be able to sneak over, grab the envelope, and sneak back without attracting his attention."

Barclay can tell his face is doing something complicated from the way that Indrid sighs and says, "I warned you that you wouldn't like it."

"Okay, okay," Barclay says. "Just a...conversation with Stern. Just that in exchange for not being dissected in a government facility somewhere."

"Come, now, there's no need to exagger--" Indrid pauses and stares into space for a moment. "Okay, perhaps that's not a total exaggeration."

Barclay pinches the bridge of his nose. " _Indrid_!"

"We'll stop it before it gets that far!" Indrid insists. "Grab a tray. I'll go around the back so I can sneak in once he's distracted." He turns around and rests his hands on Barclay's chest, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. "This will be fine. Probably. But we need to act, preferably in the next three minutes."

Great, nothing like a deadline to ratchet Barclay's nerves up significantly. When this is all over, he's going to have a long, hysterical anxiety attack, and then crawl back into bed.

For now, though, he apparently has work to do.

* * *

Barclay's hands are shaking as he carries a tray out into the dining area. At least, he figures, he won't have to feign clumsiness when it comes time to drop the dishes on the floor. Adler gives him a thumbs-up from the other side of the window, where he's prepared to enact Plan B if necessary--pulling the fire alarm in the hopes of causing enough of a commotion for Barclay or Indrid to get the envelope from Stern in the ensuing chaos. He hopes it doesn't come to that--they'll end up with a lot of cranky, cold residents outside--but part of him thinks the fire alarm would be better for his nerves in the long run than a conversation with Stern will be. He can feel a headache starting at the base of his skull, the kind that radiates out when he's struck with an anxiety attack. He needs to be able to get through the plan without losing it.

He stops at Indrid's now empty table first, loading his half-eaten pancakes and still-cooling coffee onto the tray. Next, he heads over to Dani.

"Hey," he says very quietly as he puts her dishes onto the tray. His voice only quavers a little. "When I'm done here can you very casually get up and leave the dining room for a couple minutes? There's a thing we gotta do."

"O...kay?" she says. 

"I'll explain later," he promises her. "If you hear a clatter of dishes, just ignore it."

"Um, if you say so, I guess?" She picks up her sketchbook and charcoal.

"Thanks."

He watches her go, then takes a deep breath and picks up the tray again, heading back to Stern's table. He manages to keep his hands from shaking too much as he picks up the empty plate and coffee cup.

"Oh!" Agent Stern says, looking up from his work, "I could have done that!"

"No worries!" Barclay says, probably too quickly. "Part of the table service...service." He winces. "Uh, have a good day." He turns abruptly, before Stern can say anything else, and barely has to feign his stumble at all once he reaches the table that Indrid indicated earlier. He wobbles, just to put on a good show, and then unceremoniously drops the tray.

" _Shit!_ " he exclaims. He tries not to look over his shoulder as he crouches down to put the broken dishes onto the tray. He should probably do inventory of the dishes after this; it might be time to put an order in. Not to mention, inventory is always good at calming his nerves.

Stern's chair drags across the tile. "Are you alright?" he calls over.

"Fine!" Barclay insists. "Just...clumsy." He listens to Stern's footsteps and then there he is, crouching down in front of Barclay to help clean up the mess. Facing the wrong direction, of course.

"Let me help," Stern says. He picks up a chunk of ceramic and deposits it on the tray. "You do enough around here as it is."

"It's my job," Barclay says. "But I appreciate the help, Agent Stern."

"Please, call me Joe," Stern says. "I know I've told you that before."

Barclay forces a laugh. "Well, you know...professionalism...and all." He moves to run a hand through his hair, a nervous tic he's never been able to quit, and stops himself just in time once he remembers his hands are covered in syrup and coffee. Shit, he's gotta get Stern to face the other way.

"I understand," Stern says. "But I'm not really on the job here, am I?"

Is that some sort of trap? Or threat? Barclay needs to get through this conversation before he has a meltdown.

"I...am?" he tries weakly. "I mean. My job. Is here."

It's a good thing he's so scared of imprisonment and extermination, otherwise he would be mortified at his inability to hold a fucking normal conversation. He sees Indrid over Stern's shoulder, slowly inching into the room and towards the table, but his progress is halted by the fact that Stern won't turn around. Barclay has to come up with _something_ to direct his attention away.

"Well, sure," Stern says, smiling. "But you're friendly enough with the rest of the people staying here. Aubrey and that boy Jake and his friends and the woman who's always on the piano and...uh...well, your, um--Indrid?"

Barclay blinks. "Indrid?"

"That's his name, isn't it?" Stern says. "I thought that was...what Dani called him yesterday."

"Um."

"He's your, um, boyfriend, then?"

"Well, um, I mean, that's the--" He's so flustered by the question that he almost says, _That's the closest term you have for it on this planet._ He stops himself just in time, frozen with his mouth open. Why the hell is Stern asking about Indrid?

...unless he _knows_. Or maybe, at least, suspects. Goddammit, how many times has he told Indrid to use a fucking alias? He tries to shoot Indrid a glare over Stern's shoulder, but Indrid just waves his finger in a circle, urging Barclay to hurry up.

"--um, yeah, he's my boyfriend, for lack of a better term," Barclay finally manages to say, when the silence has gone on for a beat too long.

"That's...nice," Stern says. Something about the smile he offers is a little flat. "So, is it...new? I feel like...." He laughs awkwardly. "I feel like I left for the holidays and came back and it was like he was already part of the gang. I mean, I've lived here for like, four months and I still don't feel like part of the gang."

Barclay refrains from shouting exactly why that is. Or thinking too hard about how closely Stern has apparently been tracking Indrid's movements.

"Not...exactly new?" he says instead. "We were together for a long time and we broke up before I came to Kepler. Life conspired to throw up back together and we decided to try again now that we're a little older and more settled." He's honestly impressed with his ability to say all that coherently on the spot. His brain feels like mush and Indrid is still hovering behind Stern, waving his hands to encourage Barclay to get a move on.

"That's...sweet," Stern says. He looks down at his hands for a moment, and Barclay finally seizes his opportunity, rolling an empty fruit salad cup off towards the kitchen, away from the table with Stern's belongings and Barclay's envelope.

"Oh, shoot," Barclay says, maybe too theatrically, but it does the trick. Stern's eyes go to the cup and follow its path towards the kitchen.

"Let me get that," he says quickly, and leans over to grab it. Behind him, Indrid races to Stern's table and snatches the envelope, darting back and out of Stern's line of sight with an incongruous grace. By the time Stern presents Barclay with the fruit cup, Indrid is out of the dining room and around the corner, motioning for Barclay to finish up his distraction.

"Thanks so much," Barclay says. He drops it quickly onto the tray of broken dishes and nearly jumps to his feet. "Sorry about all that--I should get these into the kitchen."

"Not a problem at all!" Stern insists. "Happy to help, as always. If you need anything else...?"

And suddenly there's Indrid again, making much more noise. The envelope is gone from his hands and he's smiling vaguely.

"There you are, my dear," he says to Barclay. "Are you just about finished?"

"I am!" Barclay says quickly. "I...dropped a thing. Let me just put this in the kitchen!" To Stern, he adds, "Nice talking to you?" and then balances the tray against his hip and grabs Indrid's wrist with his free hand, pulling him along and into the kitchen.

Once the door is closed and he can see through the window that Stern has returned to his table and noticed nothing amiss, Barclay allows himself a heavy sigh of relief. He dumps the broken dishes into the garbage and tosses the ones that remain intact into the sink, washing his hands quickly.

"I guess you don't need me to pull the fire alarm, then?" Adler asks.

"No, we've handled it," Indrid says. "Thank you, Adler."

"Thank god that's over," Barclay mutters to himself. When he turns around, Indrid produces the envelope from where it was tucked into his waistband. Barclay can't stop himself from taking Indrid's face firmly between his hands and kissing him.

"I love you," he says once he pulls away, relief dripping from every syllable.

"Of course you do," Indrid replies, because he's a fucking asshole. Barclay still kisses him again, though, because he's a fucking asshole who just saved Barclay's life.

"Adler, can you finish up with the dishes and mop up outside?" Barclay asks. "I need to get out of here before I have a breakdown."

"Sure thing, boss," Adler says.

Barclay rubs his eyes. "Let's head back to my room, so I can scream in peace," he says to Indrid.

"Whatever you want, my darling," Indrid says, and the two of them slip out of the kitchen and head towards Barclay's room without more than a glance at where Stern remains, looking through his folders.

* * *

In theory, Barclay shouldn't get too comfortable, given he's got a little less than ninety minutes until he needs to get ready for lunch service.

In actuality, the moment the door to his room is closed and locked behind them, he drops face-first onto his still-unmade bed.

"I still feel like I'm going to throw up," he mutters into the blankets. "Holy shit, that was terrifying."

The mattress shifts as Indrid sits down beside him, rubbing his back. "I wouldn't have let him take you," he promises.

"Yeah, but if he figured it out, there's no way I would have gotten out of it without blowing up everything for everyone here at the Lodge," Barclay says. From Indrid's silence, he assumes that's not an incorrect assumption. "At least it's over for the moment. It's probably just a matter of time until one of us has a run in with Stern again." Barclay rolls onto his back and looks up at Indrid. "He had a lot of questions about you. You should be careful, okay? He's pretty Bigfoot-focused, but I can't imagine he'd turn down a chance to capture the Mothman too."

Indrid stares into space for a moment with the distant expression he always gets when he's looking at potential futures.

"I don't think there's a very good chance of discovery," he says. "But I'll do my best to be discreet." He comes back to himself and looks at Barclay with a single raised eyebrow. "Of course, it's hard to be less discreet than leaving an envelope full of my past identities and a diary about how I'm Bigfoot out where anyone can just pick it up."

Barclay blindly grabs a pillow and swings it around to smack Indrid in the chest. "You know, I love you, but sometimes I struggle to remember why I actually _like_ you."

Indrid catches the pillow easily and tucks it underneath his head as he lies down next to Barclay, curled on his side to face him. "I'm still not entirely sure why you felt the need to pull all your secrets out this morning."

"Because it's not...." He sighs and scrubs at his face for a moment. "It's not about it being all my secrets. It's about...I had a good day, yesterday. And I was thinking about all the anniversaries over the years, good and bad, and how things have sort of shaken out that I'm here and I'm happy and you're here too. All this history we have. And that's what I was thinking about. Our history. One specific drawing of yours in particular. So I decided to dig it out."

"Which drawing?"

Barclay pushes himself up to a sitting position, scooting back on the bed until he can press his back against the wall. He grabs the envelope and opens it, dumping the contents on the bed between Indrid and himself. It only takes Indrid a moment to sit up fully and join him in sorting through the objects laid out before them.

"Look at these," Indrid murmurs, taking Barclay's stack of old driver's licenses and spreading them out on the bed. "It's like a history book of bad design aesthetics." He taps an old Nevada driver's license with one finger. "Your hair is quite good here, though. You should grow it out again."

"Long isn't bad and short isn't bad, but the in-between stages are really annoying," Barclay says. He shifts through papers and photos until he finds what he's looking for, a picture of the two of them not long after they met. Barclay's hair is long and tied up in a bun and Indrid's is in a messy bowl cut that probably would have looked better if his hair was anything approaching straight. "I wasn't the only one who was a fashion icon in the late 60s."

Indrid winces. "Now, that's not fair. You look entirely charming and I look like I couldn't be bothered to have my hair cut professionally."

"You _couldn't_ be bothered to have your hair cut professionally," Barclay reminds him. "You did it yourself in the Winnebago's bathroom when you could be bothered to do it at all."

"Still," Indrid says, shifting through the other pictures and detritus. He nudges a Polaroid from the mid-seventies out from under some other papers. They both have long hair in this one. Barclay can't remember who took it, but it must have been someone they were pretty comfortable with because there's no mistaking the way they're staring at each other--they're baldly and openly in love. "My god, look how young we were." Indrid's voice is soft and a little awed. 

"I swear I never felt that young," Barclay murmurs. He inches closer to Indrid, and Indrid wastes no time in tucking himself under Barclay's arm and against his side. "I felt ancient by the time I got to Earth. Mature beyond my years. And maybe I was, a little, between the exile and having to explore a new world and making all sorts of mistakes, but to think back to being that young now...." He rests his temple against the top of Indrid's head.

Indrid pulls out another item, a postcard from the Blue Ridge Mountains. On the back it says, _Missing you terribly every moment I'm away. I'll be back soon, my darling. Know that I love you._ There's no signature, just a heart, which was how Indrid signed most of the letters and postcards he sent when he had to take the occasional trip on his own. Indrid picks it up now, looking it over intently before pressing it against his chest and looking up at Barclay.

"I can't believe you kept all of these," he says quietly.

"I honestly can't believe it either, some days," Barclay admits. He takes the postcard from Indrid and runs his thumb over the curled edges, soft with age. "I don't think I ever stopped loving you, not really. And I think it was easier to take all of these things and put them away and avoid dealing with them than it was to consider looking through them all again to decide what to throw away and what to keep."

It's probably a blessing, at this point. There were times in the early nineties when Barclay was so angry with Indrid he probably would have burned the entire envelope if confronted with the contents. He would have lost all of this history in the blink of an eye.

He sees the edge of the drawing he was looking for sticking out from under the pile of mementos. He tugs it out and presents it to Indrid with a flourish.

"It wasn't about secrets," he says again, softly, as Indrid takes the drawing. "It was about this. Our past. Together. And in the context of Stern, it's a secret, but in the context of you and me in bed on a chilly morning, it's history."

Indrid smiles down at the drawing. It's one of several that Barclay has held onto over the years, but definitely the most careworn of all of them. The others are things he stored away once he received them, but this is something that was a part of his life for years. Every time he moved to add it to the envelope, he'd pause and stick it back in the book he was reading or between the pages of his notebook full of recipes. 

That's actually where he eventually found it, a few years after he left Indrid to strike out on his own. He opened his recipe book to look for something and it fluttered out and to the ground. Looking at it brought on a fresh wave of hurt, made him angry and depressed, squeezed his heart and blocked his throat with something raw and painful. He almost tore it in two pieces and threw it in the trash right then, but by the time he had cycled through all of those emotions, he was too exhausted to do anything more than slide it into the envelope and try to forget he had seen it at all.

"I was so wildly enamored of you," Indrid says. His smile is small and private as he examines the drawing. "Especially in those first five years or so. I wasn't expecting to fall so hard and I tried as best I could to hide it, but it was really just as effusive and dreamy as any young love, I suppose." He offers Barclay a wry grin, glancing up from the drawing. "I wanted to be cool, to lean into that persona I had cultivated. I spent that first year we traveled together positioning myself as this knowledgeable authority figure, but once I realized how I felt, how you felt...I was entirely useless with it."

"If it makes you feel any better, I definitely thought you were cool and knowledgeable for probably way longer than I should have," Barclay admits.

"It does, a little," Indrid says. He looks back to the pile of papers and photos and pulls out a few more drawings. "I throw out nearly everything I draw, but I hated throwing out drawings of you almost as much as I loved drawing you in the first place. It was a good impulse, in the end--after you left, I barely had any photos, but I still had drawings squirreled away. I stumbled over them at random for years and it hurt every time, but I was also just...grateful, I suppose. For evidence that you existed." He looks up at Barclay again. "I'm grateful you still exist. I'm certainly not going to let any FBI agents change that any time soon."

The last vestiges of panic drain out of Barclay as he shifts so he can rest his head on Indrid's shoulder while they silently sift through the photos and drawings, the postcards and notes. He wishes there were more photos. He wonders if Indrid would laugh at him if he asked Dani to take a photo later today, then takes in the way that Indrid is touching each artifact with reverence and decides he probably wouldn't.

Their whole life together, spread out on the bed. It feels immense, but it can all fit inside just one envelope.

Eventually, Barclay sighs and sits up. "I have to go get ready for lunch," he says.

"Well," Indrid says, "I understand that, logically, of course. But there's one small problem."

Barclay grins. "Yeah? And what's that?"

"I don't want you to go get ready for lunch," Indrid says, and Barclay laughs.

"Unfortunately, my schedule doesn't bend to your whim," he says, but Indrid just reaches out and taps one finger against the drawing of the two of them in bed, right over where it says, _Call in sick_. "I can't just call in sick because you're feeling needy."

"You can, actually," Indrid says. "And I'm not feeling needy--I'm feeling nostalgic, and you are too. Plus, you had a _very_ stressful breakfast service. Maybe you need a nap."

" _Indrid_ ," he says, laughing again. "That's not how it works!"

"I believe it's actually exactly how it works," Indrid says. "And, in fact, is exactly how it _will_ work."

Barclay narrows his eyes, but Indrid's butter-wouldn't-melt expression doesn't falter. It's entirely possible that Indrid's being honest--the future holds an afternoon spent in bed rather than spent working lunch. It's equally possible that Indrid is talking out his ass in an attempt to get Barclay to skive off work.

"Plus," Indrid continues, "technically, it's hardly a lie. You have your...." He gestures vaguely. "Your anxieties. And I imagine this morning was enough to send them into overdrive."

He's not entirely wrong--Barclay's anxiety certainly started to gang up on him the longer that Stern had the envelope, and he's honestly a little surprised he's not curled in a corner, hyperventilating right now.

"The world won't end if you take one day off to spend with me," Indrid says softly. "I promise it won't--I can see the future."

Barclay rolls his eyes, but mostly out of habit. There's a rare kindness and earnestness in Indrid's tone and gaze. And, fuck, he _did_ have a hard morning. He looks at the drawing again and remembers how good it felt, all those years ago, to forget about everything else in the world and just spend a day talking to the person he loved.

Tomorrow or the next day, Indrid will leave again, and who knows how long it will be until Barclay sees him next. He's been at Amnesty Lodge for over twenty years and has probably taken less than a dozen days off in total.

"Yeah," he finally says. "Yeah, okay. I'll call Dani and see if she can't fill in. It's probably not going to be busy anyway."

"It's not," Indrid says serenely.

"You're _really_ annoying."

"Yes, but you're about to kiss me anyway," Indrid says, and smirks, and what can Barclay do but kiss that smug look right off his face?

* * *

When Barclay wakes from an afternoon doze a few hours later, Indrid is still sleeping in his arms. On the nightstand, however, is a new drawing of the two of them sleeping together, just like they were only a few moments beforehand.

Barclay looks at it fondly and then picks it up and slips it into the envelope for safekeeping.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a couple other balls in the air as well right now, but, as I said, progress is slow-going. I might one day finish the Ikea fic. Who knows!


End file.
